Strength in Victimhood Through Malcom X's Anti-Jeremiad Carmen Sherlock Scripps

Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award Research Award 4-26-2018 Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcom X's Anti-Jeremiad Carmen Sherlock Scripps Recommended Citation Sherlock, Carmen, "Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcom X's Anti-Jeremiad" (2018). 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award. 2. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cclura_2018/2 This First-Year Award Winner is brought to you for free and open access by the Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award First Year Award Winner Carmen Sherlock Scripps College Reflective Essay Reflective Essay My introduction to the world of scholarly research began in the fall of 2017 in my first year Writing 50 class, when we were presented with the fairly open-ended task of creating a researched argument around a form of rhetoric (a notable speech, photograph, poem, etc.) that we had been previously exposed to in the class. While I was quickly drawn to the striking language in Malcolm X’s perennial speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” I was at a loss as to how to create a scholarly argument around this immensely famous piece of American rhetoric. What, I wondered, is left to say about this speech? What gaps are there left to fill in the scholarly conversation about one of the most famous American leaders of the twentieth century? An argument began to cohere when Claremont Colleges librarian Charlotte Brun introduced concept mapping to me, showing me how I can expand upon and draw conclusions from my initial ideas. I was struck, for example, by Malcolm X’s frequent use of the word “chump” in his speech, and by concept mapping, I was able to connect this word to the notion of victimhood and flesh out the implications of this term: on the one hand, it suggests someone who is faultless and at the mercy and abuse of another, while on the other hand, it implies a culpability—and thus responsibility and agency—on the part of the “chump,” or “victim.” I was able to develop this idea through further workshops with Charlotte Brun, where I was introduced to database search engines, like those of the Claremont Colleges Library and EBSCO, which exposed me to the scholarly conversation surrounding Malcolm X’s rhetoric. I used the Claremont Colleges Library website’s research guides—namely the Africana Studies guide, the Cultural Studies guide, and the U.S. History guide—which granted me access to the Black Studies Center database, the America: History and Life database, and the Academic Search Premier. Exploring these databases I came across a variety of rhetorical strategies, and, eventually, the crux of my thesis: the method of rhetoric called the jeremiad, a model that fundamentally embraces, and calls for a return to, the founding ideals of a society. Though some scholars had categorized Malcolm X’s strategy as such, I found evidence for his employment of the converse—the “anti-jeremiad”—due to the agency, independence, and shift toward Black Nationalism that his use of the word “chump” implies. I found information enough to defend this argument at Honnold Mudd library, where I encountered rhetoric scholar Sacvan Bercovitch’s pivotal book, The American Jeremiad, which analyzes the origins of the jeremiad as a strategy used by the Puritans. I wanted to contrast my argument for Malcolm X’s anti-jeremiad with an example of a more modern, situationally similar jeremiad, which I found in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech “I Have a Dream”: here, he explicitly lauds the founding values of mainstream American culture (the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence), an ideology which differs fundamentally from Malcolm X’s call for Black Nationalism. During further workshops, Charlotte Brun showed me how to map and connect my research. The library and databases revealed to me salient work by scholars such as Robert Terrill, Celeste Michelle Condit, David Howard-Pitney, Kurt Ritter, and Keith Miller—leaders in the field of American rhetoric and Malcolm X—but I did not know how to see beyond these snippets of the scholarly conversation; I felt lost in the pages of online journals and library shelves. However, as I began to record and map out the bibliographies of the articles and books I was reading, I noticed a coherence: three people had cited Robert Terrill, for example, or Celeste Michelle Condit had also drawn upon Kurt Ritter. Noting similarities between bibliographies allowed me to begin to see the full scope of the scholarly conversation. This perspective also allowed me to see the limits of the conversation. While many scholars had written about the jeremiad as a rhetorical strategy, and some had even argued that Malcolm X employed it, much less was said on its converse, the anti-jeremiad, and none had argued for Malcolm X’s use of it. This was the niche I was able to fill, and I therefore cited scholar Darryl Dickson-Carr’s argument for Malcolm X’s use of the jeremiad and refuted it, citing scholar Keith Miller’s classification of Malcolm X’s rhetoric as well as the primary text itself to demonstrate how the fundamental renunciation of mainstream American culture implied by his use of the word “chump” is in fact an employment of the anti-jeremiad strategy of rhetoric. And further using the library’s extensive databases, I was able to research the history and the implications of Malcolm X’s notion of victimhood, finding the dual usage of this term as far back as in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, and encountering recent psychological studies on the effects of self-labeling and reclaiming controversial identities. Beginning with concept-mapping, I was able to expand my initial fascination with Malcolm X’s galvanizing rhetoric into an examination of a discrepancy—the implications of his usage of the word “chump”—that, I found, was unaddressed by scholars in the field. Navigating the library website’s research guides, I discovered a strategy of rhetoric previously unheard of to me, and was able to connect this idiosyncrasy of Malcolm X’s speech to the antithesis of this mode of rhetoric. By mapping out my research and tracking others’ citations, I was able to grasp the limitations of the scholarly conversation and insert my own research into the discussion. Without the databases of the Claremont Colleges Library and the support of librarian Charlotte Brun, I would not have been able to contribute to this discussion of Malcolm X’s rhetoric and discover the thrill that is asserting your own voice into the scholarly conversation. 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award First Year Award Winner Carmen Sherlock Scripps College Research Project “Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcolm X’s Anti-Jeremiad” Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcolm X’s Anti-Jeremiad Carmen Sherlock Professor Kimberly Drake Scripps College Fall 2017 Abstract: The jeremiad is a rhetorical strategy found in countless fields—including the speeches of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.—which laments a society’s current situation and calls for a return to the essentially good principles upon which it was founded. Some scholars have argued that the rhetoric of Malcolm X employs this strategy; however, through an analysis of his speech The Ballot or the Bullet, I argue that it in fact does the opposite: he uses the anti-jeremiad, a rhetorical pattern that fundamentally renounces the dominant ideals of, in this case, the twentieth-century United States. I reach this conclusion from an analysis of his ironic treatment of the notion of victimhood, specifically exploring the implications of his use of the word “chump” and examining how this assigns a peculiar responsibility, and thus agency, to his audience, reinforcing his anti-jeremiad call for intentional separation and Black Nationalism. I later consider studies of such self- and group-labeling and label reclamation, which have found that, for example, the reclamation of victimhood actually diminishes the stigma attached to that label and greatly increases a community’s perception of its own power. Keywords: Malcolm X, jeremiad, anti-jeremiad, victim, Black Nationalism Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcolm X’s Anti-Jeremiad Amongst the many strategies of American orators, scholars have identified a frequent pattern of rhetoric called the jeremiad, a rhetorical tradition influentially examined by the scholar Sacvan Bercovitch. The jeremiad—eponymously coined after the laments of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah (Campbell)—first emerged as a rhetorical strategy amongst seventeenth- century Puritans, and Bercovitch defines this early manifestation of the jeremiad as a "political sermon—what might be called the state-of-the-covenant address” (Bercovitch). Expanding upon the Puritan (and solely white) communities Bercovitch originally studied, scholars continued this examination, identifying the “modern American jeremiad,” which is no longer necessarily linked to religion but rather, as rhetorical critic and scholar Robert Terrill characterized, is a warning linked with an optimistic preview of coming glory. It has been used by many nineteenth- and twentieth-century orators; here I will be examining its position in the Civil Rights Movement, and, specifically, Malcolm X’s usage of it (or lack thereof). As identified by scholars Elizabeth Lei and Keith Miller, the modern American jeremiad is comprised of three key elements: “A consideration of the freedom promises in America’s founding documents, a detailed criticism of America’s failure to fulfill this promise, and a prophecy that America will achieve its promised greatness and enjoy unparalleled happiness” (Lei).

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